Throughout the off-season, the Miami Dolphins spent a ton of money on a number of players, and one of those high-priced free agents made one heck of a play against the Texans on Saturday night. Much to the chagrin of Texans fans, CB Brent Grimes looked even better on Saturday night than he did before his season ending injury.

Grimes had some help, though, as you'll see on the video. Texans QB Matt Schaub and WR DeAndre Hopkins made this a little less difficult for the former Falcon...

There's a reason I warned people not to put too high of an expectation on a rookie WR.

Hopkins doesn't have great deep speed such that these starting caliber CBs are forced to honor the deep routes.
They can play him tight until Hopkins can prove that he's capable of fooling them with a double move.

At the same time, Hopkins still needs to work on his route running to make it sharp and precise, and he needs to practice those tricks of the trade as how to widen the CB, how to get them to open their hips in order to help himself to gain a bit of an advantage.

Harris was getting all pizzed off that Matt didn't throw it to a wide-open Andre.

That doesn't bother me.

9 times out of 10 in the regular season, Matt's not going to ignore AJ like that. He's going to feed him the ball. The way I see this is that this is pre-season and Matt is trying to get Nuk involved. He's putting the ball where Nuk is supposed to be to develop some of that timing and trust. It's more about testing Nuk and getting him prepped for the regular season than making the right QB read/throw in that situation.

Harris was getting all pizzed off that Matt didn't throw it to a wide-open Andre.

That doesn't bother me.

9 times out of 10 in the regular season, Matt's not going to ignore AJ like that. He's going to feed him the ball. The way I see this is that this is pre-season and Matt is trying to get Nuk involved. He's putting the ball where Nuk is supposed to be to develop some of that timing and trust. It's more about testing Nuk and getting him prepped for the regular season than making the right QB read/throw in that situation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by disaacks3

My question has been who was he pi**ed at? Himself (for an underthrow), or Hopkins (for not breaking the route off sharply?

If Hopkins had made a sharp cut, would that make Schaub's throw a little further behind???

Harris was getting all pizzed off that Matt didn't throw it to a wide-open Andre.

That doesn't bother me.

9 times out of 10 in the regular season, Matt's not going to ignore AJ like that. He's going to feed him the ball. The way I see this is that this is pre-season and Matt is trying to get Nuk involved. He's putting the ball where Nuk is supposed to be to develop some of that timing and trust. It's more about testing Nuk and getting him prepped for the regular season than making the right QB read/throw in that situation.

I hear what you're saying, but Matt is always talking about taking what the defense gives you...

I hope you're right, & in the regular season that safety stays home & Matt gets the ball to Andre. Then DeAndre is doing exactly what we want him to, draw that attention.

But this is one of those situations where some people would accuse Matt of "staring down" his receiver. People wrongly accuse Peyton of the same thing. They are purposely trying to get that safety to come over, if he never does, they have an easy throw. If they come over, the other route should be open.

Where that screws them up, especially Peyton, they wait too long to pull the trigger. They want the other route so bad that they keep their attention on the first read & the safety never bites. They end up throwing it so late, that the receiver's route closes the gap they're trying to open.